Social Services
“Today, state spending on cash assistance through FIP accounts for less than one-half of 1 percent of our entire state budget,” ~ Kate Brewster, RI Poverty Institute. The qualifier “cash assistance” makes all the difference, though, and ProJo reporter Katherine Gregg picked it up. As Gregg reports, direct cash assistance has dropped from $58 million…
The usual suspects are out complaining about Governor Carcieri’s proposed budget cuts: Even without details, Kate Brewster, executive director of Rhode Island College’s Poverty Institute, said the outcome is predictable and “slashing public services while not addressing the tens of millions of dollars that are being lost to some of the recently enacted tax cuts…
Mark Steyn pithily sums up a little-discussed truism undergirding many social welfare programs: This is why I’m opposed to universal social programs – because they were set up on the basis of mid-20th century birth rates. Defined benefit plans and the pending Social Security crisis seem to prove the point, no? He also links to…
The ProJo’s Steve Peoples reports: The Department of Children, Youth and Families is about to fundamentally change the way it does business. The state child-welfare agency is moving forward with an aggressive plan to rely on a handful of private companies to manage care for Rhode Island’s most vulnerable children. By streamlining services and reducing…
I ended a previous post on the plunging poverty rate with the observation that relying on the government is insidious because such reliance leaves people in the lurch when programs on which they depend get yanked out from under them. Such is the case of the “1,900 to lose childcare aid tomorrow.” I’m sympathetic to…
According to the Census Bureau–and incoherent indicators aside–the U.S. Poverty rate has decreased significantly. Good news, right? Well, for some… Elizabeth Burke Bryant, executive director of Rhode Island Kids Count, was quick to hail the findings as “good news for Rhode Island families.” ….but not others: Still, Kate Brewster, executive director of the Poverty Institute…
Via 7to7: Rhode Island must hire almost 50 social workers at the state’s foster care agency to meet national guidelines. That’s according to testimony today from Patricia Martinez, the director of the Department of Children, Youth and Families. She spoke before a state Senate committee investigating how DCYF handles children in foster care. A federal…
Yes, that’s my piece about DCYF’s structural problems found on this morning’s Providence Journal editorial page, nestled between the Editor’s thoughts on NY Mayor Bloomberg’s possible presidential run and Froma Harrop’s piece on the house swallow. Of necessity–no surprise–I had to boil down the information I provided in my lengthier posts hereabouts (here and here),…
Pat Crowley–who throws ad hominem attacks around like a Fenway Park Vendor throws peanuts (though they’re more accurate)–has peeked in to drop a couple bombs concerning my DCYF post. However, he did attempt a more substantive critique at Kmareka (a post which Justin already mentioned). Crowley thinks that my calculations don’t take into account compounding…
The ProJo reports: Rhode Island’s Child Advocate Jametta O. Alston is pursuing class-action status on behalf of the 3,000 children now in state custody, aiming for nothing less than an overhaul of Rhode Island’s child-welfare system, which the suit portrays as overburdened and mismanaged. “It’s beyond broken,” Alston said of the system. “It’s demolished. It…
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